EECS 298-11: CAD Seminar
Tuesday, March 7, 5pm  (NOTE special day)
531 Cory Hall, Hogan Room

      Software Synthesis for Hardware/Software Co-design of Embedded Systems 
       
                      Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
                               UC Berkeley

Our methodology for control-dominated embedded reactive systems is based on an
implementation-independent representation, Codesign Finite State Machines
(CFSMs). This representation allows us to preserve semantical correctness
throughout the design process, because CFSMs assume unbounded, non-zero
reaction delays, that correspond both to hardware and software behavior.  CFSMs
can be generated from a variety of specification languages, such as Esterel,
StateCharts, VHDL, Verilog.  Partitioning is user-driven, while our co-design
environment performs automatically all other synthesis tasks.  We derive
hardware directly from CFSMs, assuming single-cycle reaction delays (but
pipelining is also allowed by the model semantics).  We also synthesize
software automatically.  Depending on the chosen micro-controller, a real-time
scheduler and I/O port drivers are automatically synthesized.  We perform
system validation by mixing formal verification (made possible by our
finite-state model) with simulation (to identify and rule out special cases).

In this talk we will concentrate on the synthesis of software programs.
Software components for embedded reactive real-time applications must satisfy
tight code size and run-time constraints.  We propose a software generation
methodology that takes advantage of the very restricted class of specifications
and allows for tight control over the implementation cost.  The methodology
exploits several techniques from the domain of Boolean function optimization.
We also used a simplified control/data-flow graph as an intermediate
representation for optimization and to accurately estimate the size and timing
cost of the final executable code.

For further reference and a list of the publication:
http://www-cad.eecs.berkeley.edu/research/hsc/abstract.html


Future Seminars:

March 15 - Alice Parker, USC

March 22 - Raul Camposano, Synopsys
           "Higher Level Design Tools"

March 29 - NO SEMINAR, due to Spring break

April  5 - Dave Patterson, UC Berkeley
           "A Case for NOW"